Hourglass Control
Overview This deck is based on the raw power of Golden Hourglass. It digs through its deck very quickly, generating double digits of quanta a turn and unleashing powerful dragons. It is mono-time, to make sure you have enough time quantum for your hourglasses to run smoothly, but there is more than enough power in it. Cards This is my current list. *20 Time Factory :Yes, 20. You want to have about 4 in your opening hand, and you really don't mind getting a lot of them, as you want to be activating hourglasses, playing dragons, and still reversing time. *2 Procrastination :Mainly slot-filling, but a very powerful shield none-the-less. If you'd like more creatures, these can be Anubis. I currently don't have the time rare weapon (Eternity), but when I get one it is taking the place of one of these. *6 Golden Hourglass Absolutely insane card advantage. There's really nothing more that needs to be said. *6 Reverse Time Again, insane. Obviously, try to target creatures they can't immediately recast, but even just hitting Photons is still ridiculous. It basically gives you a free turn, and in that turn you draw 3-4 cards and attack for 10-20. *6 Devonian Dragon Win condition. Swings for 10. The only issue is Maxwell's Demon, and you can keep using Reverse Time and more Dragons to keep him off his ability. Strategy First turn, you want to hit 4 Time Factories. 3 is acceptable, 2 is risky. less is an autolose, but almost never happens. Getting more than 4 is usually fine too. Second turn play an Hourglass if you have one. (if you don't you're in a bit of trouble, but you can get out of it.) if you have the mana, you usually want to play a Reverse Time as well. (if you're fortunate enough to have 6 quanta and two hourglasses, play the second of those instead.) Next turn, activate all your hourglasses, play any excess hourglasses, and pass. Fourth turn, you should have enough for a dragon, so play one and, if you have extra, activate hourglasses. If you don't have enough, or you don't have a dragon, just repeat turn 3. From there, continue playing dragons as they become available, activating hourglasses when you can, and tossing out further hourglasses and reverse times when it seems right. (Don't play hourglasses unless you've already activated all your current ones.) Strengths and Weaknesses I'm not sure it's possible to lose to FFQ if you play right. Save your Reverse Times for the Queens, and you'll usually gain two turns per Time. that's more than enough for waves of Dragons to take them down. Otyugh-based strategies are similarly easy to deal with. Anything that relies on few creatures is incredibly simple, and will be even more so with the time sword. As for weaknesses, the poison deck, if it lands a quick Arsenic, is near-unbeatable. similarly, rainbow weenies is very hard to race, especially if it plays Bone Wall. in fact, Bone Wall is incredibly hard to deal with no matter what. you need to hit a lot of dragons fast to break it. it's not unbeatable, but it's rough. It also has weaknesses against rush decks ex. Frogs and cockatrice rush, lava desroyed rush... etc and it has trouble against minimal creature control such as eagle's eye or otyugh. Also, it is faster to take out the hourglasses and just put in pillars and dragons (ive tried it) than to put them in. ~Scapemaster Comments from other users In my opinion, "This deck is based on the raw power of" Reverse Time. Try the following streamlined version - keep it to 30 cards: *~16 Time Factory *6 Reverse Time *5-6 Devonian Dragon *2-3 Golden Hourglass *1-2 Short Sword (or Eternity) *0-1 Procrastination (who needs it, if you win in 7 turns?) This is a dragon-spam deck that uses Reverse Time to kill the opponent. Golden Hourglass is useful, but very slow (especially in the 30-card version of the deck). Let's count turns: (a) spend 3 q and play 1 Golden Hourglass. (b) spend 2 more q to draw 1 card - the card you would have gotten if you hadn't wasted space with Hourglasses. © spend 2 more q to draw 1 card - maybe an extra Time Factory that you had to bloat your deck with to cover your Hourglass quanta requirements. (d) spend 2 more q to finally start realizing decent card advantage. Imho the Hourglass gets its huge advantage from being optional - you can adaptively respond to your pillar situation (using it to draw like crazy if you're short on pillars & quanta). Against Elders and AI-t50, my win rate with the 30-card deck is 99%. Against intelligent opponents, Bone Wall is a huge obstacle. Unfortunately, well-built (fast) land destruction decks are also fatal to this deck (because Devonian Dragon costs 10). ...And land destruction seems to be pretty common these days, unlike Maxwell's Demon. It would be nice to splash (or Mark) another element for Steal or Deflagration or solid control, but a huge part of the deck's effectiveness comes from its relentless speed and its ability to efficiently use all its quanta. Wasting 4+ card slots and 1 quantum per turn (by marking) really slows it down a lot. I've used a modification of the above to good effect. *16 Time pillars *5 Reverse Time *5 Devonian Dragons *2 Anubis *3 Golden Hourglass *2 Aether pillars *1 Eternity *1 Procrastination Gryftir here: One of the problems I found with the above was the Dragons being destroyed or poisoned, or even eaten. This is a little slower, but surer. Remember, if your worried about your anubis getting hit by a creature, you can use the eternity, the reverse times, or the procrastinations to get it out and take the extra turn to protect yourself. Incidentally, has anybody noticed that mutations can go through immortality from anubis? Category:Strategies